Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit
by Gwen Truong
Summary: As a child, Zero had had a close friend, who was a pureblood. He promised to marry him when they grew up. Shizuka's revenge destroyed his family and changed his fate. He decided to become a priest, leaving his childhood friend and their immature love behind. Shounen-Ai. Zero & Kaname.


**Disclaimer**: I do not own the characters. I read "Love Letters of a Priest" to seek inspiration for the letters.

**Summary**: As a child, Zero had had a close friend, who was a pureblood. He promised to marry him when they grew up. Shizuka's revenge destroyed his family and changed his fate. He decided to become a priest, leaving his childhood friend and their immature love behind. Shounen-Ai. Zero & Kaname.

**A/U**: I do not support romantic love between a cleric and an outsider in reality. However, it could be an exciting idea for a fanfic, especially when Zero and Kaname are concerned. In this story, Zero is not a Roman priest, and the mentioned religion is not Catholic or any religion we know in our real world.

**Background**:

This story happened in an AU of VK world, where vampires and humans had achieved the peace treaty. The Association is the Association of Hunters and Vampires, who ruled the world and ensured that both races abided with the laws to maintain their peaceful coexistence.

Interracial marriage became more and more common, however, the strongest hunter and pureblood families still preferred intermarriage to preserve the purity of their lines. Homosexuality was considered a great disgrace and strictly forbidden.

INTO YOUR HANDS I COMMIT MY SPIRIT

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A lantern quietly flickered its dim light to brush a part of thick darkness off the narrow corridor of an ancient monastery. Night had fallen asleep since a heavy rain passed by a couple of hours ago. Time was not breathing, flames were glimmering faintly in a small fire, showing a thin shade of a man in his clerical white robe.

The hood covered up his head, indifferently hiding his facial expression. There were only those skinny, pale hands, which could be seen, were holding a pile of old letters. Words in elegant handwriting were full on both sides of each sheet. His hands trembled as the first one caught fire, flaming up and crumpling into ash with pain.

_Dear Father Zero,_

_Congratulations on your ordination!_

_You may know how hard it was for me to put it into words, how painful my heart is feeling when I bring myself to address you Father Zero. I have attended the most important day of your life as you wished, and seen you receive all congratulations and best wishes from your seniors and your friends. I wanted to come and say a few words to you too, as you had asked me in your letter, so that we could sublimate our feelings to a good friendship, and you could have a closure to your - **our **past, but I apologize that I could not. I held my steps back when my tears started falling down._

_It was only a short distance between you and me, but the moment you knelt before your patriarch and laid a kiss on his hand, I knew I had legitimately lost you. Father, was this kiss not for me as we had always dreamed about when we were little kids? I did not know love between two men would not be blessed. I did not know we would not be able to tie a knot in front of God and become husband and wife. But I will not stop loving you._

_Did you remember we had been wedded in that winter, long before you made your vow to devote your life to God, though Ichiru-kun was not a real priest, though your parents and chairman Cross thought it was just a kids' game, though we were only ten, though we did not consummate our marriage? I have not and will never vow to anyone else, so Father, I will forever remain your spouse._

_My love will always be about you, wrapping you around._

_Please do not desert me!_

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_._

_._

Since the creation of this world, things kept moving from their own beginnings to their very ends, complying with natural laws. Sun rose in the east, set in the west. Rivers started from their upper reaches, flowing down to join the ocean. A seed developed into a new tree, a bud came into a flower, a baby grew into an adult. Time was a conception which human beings created to measure the length of those movements, the length of their journeys, the length of life.

But long life or short life, it was counted by the happy moments one experienced.

_Dear Father Zero,_

_Your cold attitude has broken my heart. God knows I should not write like this, but I cannot help it. I was almost coming to speak with you in the party, in spite of your request, that I should not, but finally I constrained my emotions to obey your wish. You did not turn to my place, you did not see I was praying for the whole time that you would look at me once, even if it was just a glance, even if it was just a tidbit of a second that your amethyst eyes reflected my image. I wish you had seen me, I wish you had seen the white orchid on my jacket._

_Have the Association always used roses to decorate their party halls? I heard that they let you make the decision this time, since it was the **tenth** anniversary of your ordination. Time had flown indifferently in our lives, you forbade me from coming to your monastery, you declined to see me, although we were in the same occasion at some certain time, knowing I had come there purposely waiting for you. You rarely replied to my letters, though each time you did, you were asking me to stay further from your sight._

_Yet you selected white orchid. Did you think of me, Father? You once told me that our wedding would be decorated with a lot of white orchids, because in your eyes I was beautiful as one. Ironically, it was the last time you held me. Your family's catastrophe happened the following day, and when we met again, you suddenly denied me, denied our relationship. I thought it was because your family's murderer was the same race as mine, you needed some time to cope with it. But time could not heal your pain, you left me to become a priest. I have been alone since._

_When I saw you in a hall with full of white orchids, a half of me was overwhelmed with joy as it looked like a scene I have seen over and over every night in my dreams, the other half of me sank in agony as in this beautiful scene, I was only an attendee who you never looked at._

_Ten years since you became a priest, twenty years since we parted ways, you have been celibate for God, I have been celibate for you. Father, what laws can separate lovers? You know the void in my heart, you know the inner loneliness of my life. I can only ask you to forgive me for waiting for you, knowing you would never return, for loving you, knowing you would never love me back, for longing for your kisses and touches, and other secular desires that I did not dare form into words, knowing it would only make you despise me further._

_Father, I believe you did love me, so I wish you would show a little more consideration on my feelings, and allow me to speak with you, if only once a year, if only a minute now and again, allow me to hear a few words from your lips._

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This place used to be the battlefield thousands years ago, when vampires and humans were in war. This monastery was built as a mark of their peace treaty for a peaceful coexistence. Millions of hunters' urns, millions of vampires' tablets were preserved in the Memorial Hall. It became lively when many high-ranked dignitaries of both sides gathered on the Memorial Day every year, but it was obliviously quiet for the rest of time.

Zero Kiryuu, the oldest son of the strongest hunter family, chose to become a priest after his family were murdered by a pureblood, whose lover was dissolved in their hands as an order from the Association.

People thought he could not overcome this great loss to continue his normal life. His seniors believed he joined the clergy to conceal the fact that he had been bitten and converted into a vampire on that fateful night. As an ex-human, he could not maintain the continuity of his family line, could not be nominated in the principal roles of the Association.

As a Kiryuu, it was his only way left.

And when his sanity was coming to its end, he left them for this ancient place.

...

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace.

That where there is hatred I may bring love,

That where there is doubt I may bring faith,

That where there is despair I may bring hope,

That where there are shadows I may bring light

...

_Dear Father Zero,_

_I am lonely without you. I could write you pages, but it would hold that always. There are very long, meaningless days since you decided to leave me once more. You left the monastery, left your home town, left the land we have grown up together, left the place you broke up with me. Your absence has told me a lot of things which I was not quite sure of. Did you abandon me not because you had stopped loving me? Did you abandon me because the bite from that mourning princess had changed your fate, and you were dying? Did you abandon me because you thought it would not pain me when you vanish from this world?_

_Father, do you not remember all the things I said to you when we were kids? I told you then how much I loved you, and I am telling you now, I would give up everything rather than lose you. If your time is limited, and God knows there is little of it we may have together, I wish there would be never any partings between us again. I must never let you go away any more. If you are not returning to me, I will be following you. If you do not wish to see me, I will become your shadow, and if behind those closed doors you are praying, I will be kneeling outside listening to your prayers._

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Flames cried as loving words turned into ashes. When the last letter disappeared in waning fire, first rays of light glided through leaf canopies to announce a new day. Ground was still wet with a freshening scent, sun was bright red on the horizon.

The priest stood up.

As his shadow was hidden behind a corner of the corridor, the lantern went out of oil, its fading light blown away, two other hands silently scratched through the ashes of those burnt love letters, seeking for its abandoned warmth.

He was not a new comer, he had been there as long as the priest was. Rain soaked through his clothes, his cold hands touched on a sealed envelope placed near the quenching fire.

_Dear Kaname,_

_Please do not write to me anymore._

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_._

_._

Lord, grant that I may seek rather

to comfort than to be comforted,

To understand than to be understood,

To love than to be loved.

For it is by forgetting that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven,

it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Amen.

The pureblood bowed down, kissing on the ground where his beloved had sat on.

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THE END

_Could you tell me what you think about it? Thank you!_


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